


Gold Bug

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: "Get it out", "Please stop", "no more", Blood, Day 6, Knives, Minor Surgery, Vomiting, Whumptober 2020, field medicine, loss of consciousness, magical parasites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Jaskier catches gold bugs in a very literal sense.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Gold Bug

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love!!!

Contrary to Jaskier’s opinion, Geralt pays quite a lot of attention to the bard. He’s just usually quiet about it. So after several hours of twitching and bitching and non-stop scratching, Geralt finally says something. 

“Can you quiet down?”

“Oh, well I’m sorry to be a _bother,_ Geralt. It’s just that I seem to have contracted some sort of rash. Ever since we stayed with that rather insane nobleman outside Lanspire, it’s been getting worse. It’s like my skin is crawling… not that you care of course. Sorry to disturb your hours of silent meditation with Roach-”

Jaskier is so involved with his whinging that mid-sentence he nearly trips over Geralt who has, in the interim period, stopped Roach, dismounted, and come to stand in front of him. 

“Let me see it,” Geralt demands.

Jaskier’s brow furrows. “Excuse you, you don’t just demand-”

“The Count had gold bugs,” Geralt explains, cutting off Jaskier’s impending incensed remarks about decorum. “That’s why he was mad. Did you take anything from his manor?” 

Jaskier stammers and digs around in his pockets, finally producing a gold brooch inlaid with emeralds. 

“Fuck,” Geralt mutters. “Show me the rash. Now.”

Jaskier begins fiddling with the numerous clasps on his doublet. “Geralt, what are ‘gold bugs?’”

Geralt hears the quaver of fear in Jaskier’s voice but he ignores it. The stupid fancy doublet is taking too long. Geralt grabs the two front halves and rips, the fine silk shredding under his fingers.

Jaskier yelps in distress. “Geralt! That doublet was a gift from the Queen of-”

“Shut up.”

Red lines criss-cross Jaskier’s torso, little trails where the gold bugs have made their paths under his skin. 

“Pants too,” Geralt orders.

Jaskier blushes. “Geralt-”

“Jaskier, these bugs will take your mind like they took the Count’s. We have to get them out and we have to get them out now. Take. Off. Your. Pants.”

The blush that had crept up Jaskier’s chest and cheeks immediately recedes and he tugs furiously at the laces on the front of his breeches. Geralt uses the delay to dig through his saddle bags for salve, bandages, and the sharp pen knife he carries for emergencies such as this. When Geralt turns back, Jaskier is standing there, stark naked and trembling with fear. 

“There’s,” Jaskier pauses to swallow and tries again. “I can see one moving on my thigh.”

Geralt sees the offending creature burrowing around under Jaskier’s skin. “You’ll probably want to sit.”

Jaskier stumbles over to a tree and sits on his breeches, leaning back against the trunk for support. “Geralt, I saw your knife. Don’t tell me first. I’ll get worked up. Just-”

He screams as Geralt presses the tip of the knife into Jaskier’s thigh. He digs around, holding Jaskier’s leg to the ground as he thrashes, chasing the magical insect as it tries to burrow deeper into the muscle to escape extraction. Finally, Geralt feels the tip of the knife crunch into the carapace of the insect and he removes it with a flick of the wrist.

When Geralt looks up, tears are dripping off Jaskier’s chin and he’s shaking from the pain and strain of holding still, not that he’s done a particularly good job of the latter. 

“How- how many more?” he rasps out between ragged breaths.

“Several at least, judging by the marks on your skin,” Geralt says. “Where does it itch the most right now?”

“My back, left side below the shoulder blade. Geralt, is there really no other way?” Jaskier pleads.

Geralt shakes his head. “No, but I’ll be quick.” He knows it’s not the comfort Jaskier wants, but it’s about the only thing he can provide right now.

He helps reposition Jaskier so that he can access his back, and wastes no time in making the next cut. Again, Jaskier screams. Geralt has heard many people scream in his life, quite a few of them by his own hand, but listening to Jaskier, his usually smooth voice breaking as his throat gives out, it’s enough that Geralt is reminded what a fantastic lie it is that witchers don’t feel.

This bug is faster, probably since it’s closer to Jaskier’s brain, and it darts beneath his shoulder blade. 

“Fuck,” Geralt growls.

“What does that mean?” Jaskier pleads.

Geralt doesn’t answer. With his left forearm, he presses Jaskier’s front roughly against the tree so that he’s pinned. With his hand, the one not gripping the blood slick knife, Geralt grabs Jaskier’s shoulder blade and pulls to create a gap between the bone and the underlying muscles. Quickly, Geralt elongates the cut and then instead slides a finger into the gap, feeling for the offending parasite. 

It’s there, Geralt can feel it, but the blood makes it slick and extremely difficult to remove without doing even more damage than he already has. Carefully, Geralt rotates his hand and manages to hook a wing with his fingernail. He studiously ignores the pleas falling from Jaskier’s mouth, the way he begs for mercy, because despite the way it feels this _is_ the mercy. 

His finger is nearly out with the wretched thing when Jaskier’s body spasms and he vomits down the side of the tree and then goes limp. 

“Fuck,” Geralt mutters. 

Jaskier’s not dead, merely unconscious. Geralt uses the opportunity to search out and remove two more gold bugs — one from Jaskier’s forearm, which will undoubtedly impede his lute playing for several weeks if not months, and another from the left side of his chest. 

Geralt carefully squishes them, their luminescent gold carapaces shattering between his thumb and the blade of his knife. He’s always hated magical parasites, the after effects of a poorly executed spell that spread like a contagion. It wasn’t enough to curse the person with the gold, apparently the idiot witch felt the need to curse the gold itself, and now here he is in the middle of the woods, digging mind-altering bugs out of Jaskier because some witch couldn’t be arsed to do proper magic.

Geralt seethes quietly as he sutures Jaskier’s shoulder back together. The other wounds are smaller, needing only two or three stitches before they’re properly closed. By the time Jaskier comes back around Geralt is applying salve and bandages, having missed the worst of the medical care. 

Jaskier blinks and twitches back to consciousness, moaning as the pain hits him. “Are they all out?” 

Geralt nods. “I think so. We’ll need to be careful for a few days and keep an eye on anything that itches, but I think you should be fine so long as you don’t touch the brooch or anything else you might have lifted from the Count again.”

Jaskier shakes his head, rustling the leaves on the ground where he’s lying. “Just the brooch.”

“Mmm,” Geralt rumbles, tying a bandage over Jaskier’s bloody thigh.

For a while Jaskier is uncharacteristically quiet, save for the occasional whimper or moan. Geralt uses the opportunity to set up camp some ways from the path. They won’t be moving on for a day or two now, so Geralt might as well make use of the daylight to get them situated. When his bedroll is laid out, he returns and collects Jaskier as carefully as he can. 

Jaskier shouts, bites his lip, and breathes. Geralt knows the pressure on his shoulder must be agonizing. Nevertheless, Jaskier manages to protest in the least dignified way possible.

“I can walk!” the bard squawks, sounding every bit like an enraged hen. 

“Not yet you can’t. I can see the way you list to the side while you sit. The last thing I need to deal with is you with a head wound because you were too dizzy to be walking,” Geralt says.

Jaskier harrumphs quietly, simultaneously pouting like a child and looking like a wounded pup. Geralt is immediately done with Jaskier’s drama and deposits him on the bedroll. 

“Rest,” he instructs and heads off to gather firewood.

“Geralt,” Jaskier calls after him and Geralt sighs as he turns around.

“What?”

“What do we do with it?” 

“Do with what?”

“The brooch,” Jaskier explains. “If it- if i caught the gold bugs from the brooch, then the next person who touches it will get them, too.”

He has a point though Geralt hates to concede it. “We’ll burn it and bury what’s left. If that doesn’t lift the curse, at least no one should find it.”

Jaskier nods and winces, but seems satisfied by Geralt’s answer. Without further ado, Geralt treks off into the woods to find firewood and hopefully dinner. Away from Jaskier, the stench of his blood still clings to Geralt both beneath his nails where he can’t wash it out and on his clothes where drops and smears have dried. Blood is part and parcel when it comes to the Path, but this isn’t just some drunk in an alley trying to mug him. This is Jaskier, and no matter how hard Geralt tries to keep distance between them, there’s no way to avoid some sense of responsibility at the very least. Jaskier has trekked across the continent with Geralt, sung his praises to any and all who would listen, improved the lot of witchers despite the infuriating tune with which he’s done it. Something about that kind of attention, which has now obviously extended beyond whatever Jaskier would need in order to write his ballads, feels more like concern, and Geralt feels strangely obliged to reciprocate. Somehow, that he’s reciprocated that concern by repeatedly stabbing Jaskier, even if it was to save him, makes Geralt’s chest hurt with the familiar ache of guilt and failure. 

Geralt knocks down a half-rotted tree out of frustration, and then collects the semi-dry upper branches for their fire. On balance, worse things have transpired between them and for worse reasons, and Geralt knows it. Once the fire is made and dinner is ready, he’ll meditate and shove this emotional nonsense out of his head. Witchers may feel but it’s certainly not an asset, or at least that’s what the ache in his chest tells him.


End file.
